Directions: Read the following two passages. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper from of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.
The Industrial Monopoly and Its Decline
Upon the completion of the Industrial Revolution by 1850 England became the workshop of the world. The population went on increasing rapidly, if not as rapidly as before, reaching 41 million by 1900. Big towns grow bigger. Production and export of both textiles and heavy industries reached new high levels.
After the abolition of the corn law, other forms of protection 【小题1】(drop) one after another. For instance, the Navigation Acts and protective tariffs on hundreds of articles. By 1860 great Britain was well on the road to free trade. Certainly, this was aggressive in character. While Britain opened her own ports to Free Trade, she demanded open ports in other countries 【小题2】 economic pressure and naval strength, thus 【小题3】(extend) foreign markets and increasing demands for British goods.
It was in the boom that collapsed in 1873 when there was great anxious concern about both markets and materials 【小题4】 Mid-Victorian prosperity reached its peak. The fact that there was a retardation in the national rate of growth to below two percent per year was even harder to bear with the growth rates of competitors such as America and Germany rising.
Arable and meat producing farmers felt the full weight of foreign competition between 1870 and 1900. In industry, 【小题5】 there were new forms of power and a trend toward bigger plants, and 【小题6】(impersonal) organization, there was a similar situation. Britain was never as strong or as innovatory in the age of steel 【小题7】 in the early age of iron. By 1896 British steel output was less than 【小题8】 of either the United States or Germany and the textile industry was declining absolutely. With its former easy advantage in world markets 【小题9】(lose), both opinion and government policy lost faith in the merits of free trade. During years of economic challenge at home, capital exports greatly increased, until they reached a figure of almost £200000000 every year before 1914, and investment income poured in to improve adverse balance(贸易逆差)on trade accounts. During the last 20 years of peace before 1914 when Britain’s role as rentier was at its height, international prices rose again, continuing to rise 【小题10】 after the end of World War I.
